Duel of the Death Cults

(Author’s Note: I’m trying to integrate more of my sense of humor into the blog, so this essay may sound more like James Howard Kunstler than John Michael Greer.)

ISIS (or “ISIL” or “The So-Called Islamic State” or “The Pseudo-Islamic Terrorist Jamboree”) is the answer to the Military-Industrial Complex’s prayers. They even come with their own scary name that makes them sound like an evil organization bent on world domination in the James Bond-iverse. (Maybe they got the idea from Archer.) 

How could anyone be opposed to bombing a group that beheads aid workers and indiscriminately slaughters women and children? They’re clearly beyond reason. Diplomacy loses the little viability the U.S. government is still willing to give it, leaving the military option as the only one left on the table. When you have the world’s biggest hammer, how could you pass up a nail as big and juicy as this one?

By now, it should come as no surprise that each new U.S. military intervention in the Middle East spawns an even more diabolical, fiendish, Hitler-y group than the last. Since at least World War 2, we’ve provided extremely generous support for their cartoonishly evil dictators and, when those get overthrown or disobedient, military interventions that have an irritating habit of killing millions of the people we’re supposed to be liberating. When the only options you give Arabs are tyranny or death, is it any wonder they keep producing death cults? 

And it’s not like we’ve been setting a great example for these “barbaric,” “backwards” people who are supposed to be stuck in the 12^th century. Our foreign policy has hardly been a paragon of virtue where they’re concerned. Despite our best intentions, we keep killing a lot of the people we’re trying to save. Of course, we’re using military means to achieve peace and justice, an approach with a terrible track record. You’d think that, if we really wanted to bestow our gifts of Democracy and Capitalism on this poor, benighted region, we’d try something else.

It’s almost like we don’t care about these people. It’s almost like we just wanna get their oil and use it to keep ruling the world. But that can’t be true! We’ve all heard our leaders explain their desire for freedom for all of God’s creatures. Maybe a few million people have gotten hurt by our attempts to help them, but that’s to be expected when our enemies are cowardly enough to disguise themselves as civilians. When the other side won’t fight fair, what choice do we have? 

If our leaders bothered to crack a history book from outside the approved canon, they might discover that American violence has the same properties as most other brands of violence. That is, it has the tendency to beget more violence. The military is only suited to reproduce itself, like some geopolitical Easter Bunny, sowing the seeds of terrorism with each bomb, airstrike and boot on the ground. They crave enemies and need to keep creating progressively more monstrous “terrorists” to justify their titanic (connotation intended) budget and the continuing support of the American public.

They also need this domestic support for intervention because their Middle Eastern clients aren’t as enthused about U.S. “assistance” as they used to be. The Gulf States’ wealth has freed them from American dependence, and now they’ve taken the wheel. But, instead of abandoning the U.S.-approved path of oppression, they’ve put the pedal to the metal and are taking that road all the way to medieval times (and I’m not talkin’ about the theme restaurant!). The “Arab street” isn’t that crazy about returning to the 12^th century, but the elite seem to have a fetish for it.

There’s an abundance of like-minded rulers in the region for the Pentagon to work with, plenty o’ potentates who can’t wait to unleash holy hell on the other side’s devils. Ironically, the mounting failures of our campaign in the Middle East are encouraging the continuation of this moronic, militaristic policy. It makes me wonder how many Americans remember what happened yesterday, much less anything from those heady early days of The Global War on Terror, lo, these 13 years ago. 

As long as we remain in a state of geopolitical amnesia, the Powers That Be in the USA will keep dragging us back into the Middle East’s Vortex of Death. The fact that they’ve done the most to create it has been downplayed by the MSM (Mainstream Media). But now the status and composition of our alliances can only be determined through the interpretation of tea leaves. The absurdity of our foreign policy is becoming undeniable, even in the credulous corridors of corporate news. 

We may be approaching a moment when sunshine will burst through the fog of propaganda and reveal even more truth than that which flooded the streets of New Orleans and Ferguson. Of course, the elite will work quickly to cobble the façade of normalcy back together. But, with preparation and organization, we could squeeze some significant changes into the status quo before they slap it back together.